The notion that China’s social credit scoring system will somehow eliminate bullying is amusing. Coercing people to behave socially, culturally and economically in accordance with some amorphous acceptable pattern, which can be varied at will, is a form of bullying in and of its self. It is a control tool with interesting possibilities.

And, it seems, it does work.

Besides promoting preferable social behavior the social credit system can be used, more effectively than propaganda, to promote changes in attitude and economic behavior. When coupled with China’s growing non cash economy, consumer decisions can be guided to achieve short terms and long term goals. If there was a shortage of pork the available supply could be rationed by market prices which would rise to lower demand. But as higher prices are unpopular, social stability would be enhanced lowering the social credit score of pork consumers. If banks require more deposits to support more loans then social credit could be used to promote greater savings. People can be motivated to read certain books, vacations to certain destinations, associate with certain foreigners or to avoid foreigners.

Jack Ma's Alibaba, Facebook, Twitter and Google have developed algorithms for analyzing online activities so as to create predictive models of behavior. A social credit score is the feedback loop to drive behavioral change and the monitoring never ends.

Free marketers like me insist central planning can’t work because the planners can never have the quantity and quality of information needed to succeed. While that gap may be narrowing, there is still a big leap from implementing control to effecting central planning.

The guy was 28 years old so his revenge waited for many years after he was bullied. Most of his victims were girls so I guess the poor guy was bullied by girls.

This is a modern high tech exercise in Pavlovian conditioning. The supreme manifestation of control.

Pollution is an economic problem and pollution abatement is a cost of doing business. Unfortunately it is a current cost with long term or future benefits not readily measured.

I worked out a class participation exercise for Chinese business students in response to a demand I use a "game" while teaching Accounting. The exercise required students to collectively make decisions, as owners, for a fictional company. The inputs were company growth, sales, profits, pollution abatement costs, effects of pollution and compliance with regulation.

Over multiple classes, the company grows, sales and profits increase and the pollution byproduct increases, the effects of the pollution affects children and grows worse, the costs of abatement rise and eventually government regulations are added.

After running this exercise in 4th year and post grad classes for a total of six classes, I stopped.

Not once, no matter the horror the produced by the pollution was the cost abatement accepted. Profits and only profits was the driving metric. Even when I said "your own child" was getting sick the collective decision was to avoid abatement cost so profits could continue to increase. This was justified by moving the wife and kid away from the danger.

Today there is enough information on pollution to pretty much exclude ignorance as a cause. Pollution is the result of economic decisions. Full stop.

The article referenced above mentions environmental issues. Better the other guy's kid dies I guess. Troop movement is faster by train and cheaper if you can get the other guy to help pay for the tracks.

Pollution in China is a major problem but is considered a "bad news" topic with little official information.

As I would not knowingly consume GM foods, I consider them to be a form of pollution. More than 10 years ago there was a lot of talk about the promise of GMO foods in China.

Some info:

www.healthandsafetyinshanghai.com/non-gmo-foods.html

www.healthandsafetyinshanghai.com/[...]

www.chinadaily.com.cn/food/gmfood.html